Studio 1, 2, 3, 4
225 Oxford Street,
London,
W1D 2LR
225 Oxford Street,
London,
W1D 2LR
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Of course, what I MEANT to say was that screens 1 and 2 were periscoped, and screen 3 was direct projected from below floor level. Sorry for the momentary aberration!
A friend of mine was one of the projectionists here at the time of conversion to 4 screens, and I spent quite a lot of time visiting. The conversion was achieved in a stupidly short time, and the cinemas reopened whilst the projection area for screens 1-3 was effectively a building site – the floor was unsurfaced, for example! This resulted in the trashing of a brand new print of ‘The Goodbye Girl’ during it’s first two weeks of release, due to the amount of dust and grit still floating around in the atmosphere, which went down VERY well with the distributors. The positioning of the actual screen at the front of the former circle, meant that the projector had to be sunk into the projection room floor to get a straight throw at it. Although screens 2 and 3 were periscoped, as I remember, this wasn’t an option in the new Studio 1.
Studio 4 had been a swimming pool at some time during its life, and the projection room, which must have been the swimming attendant’s office, was still tiled accordingly.
The projectors in Studios 1-3 were new(ish) Westar 2000’s, Studio 4 being driven by a dual guage Westar 35-70mm machine from the Prince Charles, though it was never able to show 70mm in its new home. All screens had Westar longplay towers.
Nice shots KenRoe.How are things there?
A set of Vintage photographs of Studio 1, 2, 3, 4:
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